BofA is hardly alone in this regard. Many companies — such as Boeing, General Electric, and Wells Fargo — have paid nothing to the federal treasury in recent years. Others — such as Google and Pfizer — have dramatically lowered their tax rate. Though the U.S. has a high statutory corporate tax rate, the effective tax rate that corporations actually pay is far lower, due to the myriad loopholes and credits in the corporate tax code, as well as the widespread sheltering of income in tax havens. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found, “corporate tax revenues are now at historical lows as a share of the economy.”

Of course, corporations could not get away with this behavior if policymakers actually set and enforced rules that prevented it. But conservatives in Congress have gone to great lengths to allow tax avoidance to continue. Here are six ways in which conservatives aid and abet corporate tax avoidance:

– PROTECTING OFFSHORE DEFERRAL: The Obama administration and Senate Democrats last year proposed ending the practice of allowing corporations to claim domestic tax credits for profits they earn overseas while deferring tax payments on those profits. Republicans blocked the bill in the Senate. Corporations use offshore deferral to lower their effective tax rate by 20 points or more.

— SLASHING THE IRS BUDGET: In their proposed spending plan for the rest of the fiscal year, House Republicans suggested cutting the Internal Revenue Services’s budget by $600 million, even though “every dollar the Internal Revenue Service spends for audits, liens and seizing property from tax cheats brings in more than $10.” IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman said that a $600 million cut in this year’s budget “would result in the IRS collecting $4 billion less” through tax enforcementprograms.

— PUBLICLY DEFENDING THE DODGERS: Both House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI) and Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) have said that widespread corporate tax evasion is a good reason to lower the statutory corporate tax rate. When asked by ThinkProgress if it was fair that Bank of America pays no federal corporate taxes, former governor and 2012 GOP presidential contender Tim Pawlenty replied “the corporate tax rate in America is too high.”

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